 October 29th and I don't have a lot to say except how on earth did I cram all this into a little 10 by 10 room. Holy it's gonna look worse before it looks better and I am finding some more things to purge I'm not gonna use. So that's a thing. Good morning everybody it is 8 56 a.m. Tuesday October 31st I only know that because it's Halloween. I don't enjoy driving in traffic anymore I just don't have the patience for it for whatever reason. Move to a quieter country. You know people still have to commute home for work so there is traffic. Granted it's not as bad as it was in San Jose. There are epic problems with Lowe's so you all know by now my problem with getting the floor installed in our room from Lowe's and if you don't here's a brief synopsis. So when we first moved in within a couple of days which was in the beginning of September we got here I think September 6th or 7th so by that Saturday we went to Lowe's and ordered the flooring for the art room. They said okay four to six weeks and your your floor should be it. A lot longer than that to not only get the product but to get it installed they said when we ordered it it probably is going to be like three and four weeks. It's one problem after the other and one communication failure after the other and we got no help from anybody at the store. We were waiting on one little piece of trim. It's literally Halloween it's been just about two months I just got the floor put in. You not only couldn't get a hold of anybody at the store but you couldn't get a straight answer out of anybody. That should have been enough for me to just not go shopping there and I don't blame it on Lowe's corporate I blame it on the manager of that store. Yesterday morning for something I needed for the new art room now that the floor is in. In half a mile turn left onto Southwest to Allerton Sherwood Road. Thank you. Red light camera reported ahead. Anyway that should have been enough for me with the floor but it wasn't so I ordered some pieces I needed for the new art room and I ordered it in the morning they usually pick them that day sometime and you go and pick them up late in the afternoon or the next day so I did that and not only had they not bothered to pull my order or any one of the couple dozen that I saw laying on the desk but it took them an hour an hour people to tell me they didn't have it an hour. I'm not going there again. Turn left onto South. When they found they didn't have it on the shelf they should have come out and told me and within a few minutes look we can't find it we will you know call you we'll go see if we can find it they didn't do any of that they just let me wait left me waiting in the front lobby so that's a problem. Anyway I went to Home Depot picked up essentially the same thing and got it fixed took me five minutes. In a quarter of a mile. Turn right onto Southwest. Langer Farms Parkway. But anyway it should not have taken that long I was out trying to run errands late last night like for an hour and a half that should have only taken 20 minutes and anyway I was in the happy camper. So I am out doing some errands today and in the wrong lane I'm trying to get them done. Turn right onto South. Langer Farms Parkway. Then turn left. Thank you Jeves because I'm just not yeah I'm not okay with doing them late at night much less being frustrated by Lowe's Lowe's. I'm not shopping at Lowe's again I'm just I'm kind of done with that. I yeah I just can't do it anymore so Home Depot you know my business and I am in the wrong place crap this is clean air place I've been here this is DQ station crap okay so let's turn around anyway so I need a couple more things for the art room I'm probably 90% unpacked I'm to the point where I need to hang shelves up I need to build one more cube shelf for books and things and then start labeling things so I'm I'm almost there almost but I'm going to go hit up Walmart and pick up a couple more things and I'm going to go to a Safeway we need groceries so that's what's on the agenda today and then more unpacking of the art room this guy behind next to me is like trying to know what they're doing. I wanted to clarify yeah my problem with Lowe's wasn't that it took so long although I wasn't happy about that it was the distinct lack of communication with me about said a length of time that it was taking and why it was taking so long and to the point where I had to call the corporate office to find out a piece of trim was on back order I had to literally call every day to get the installers to call me back like it was just a huge communication issue not to mention that the Tigard Lowe's sorry I do live in Tigard now Tigard Lowe's has a serious understaffing problem and it's not Tigard it's Tigard I'm still learning anyway so I'll be going to Home Depot but now we're going to venture into Walmart I don't think I've been to the Walmart up here since we moved Walmart's generally not my favorite place but if the hardware store situations anything did you go by then who am I to judge I might be pleasantly surprised we'll find out I'll be back so I just wanted to show you all I was well you know since I got back from the Myrtle Beach retreat I've been unpacking the art supplies finally and setting up the art room which you all know by now because I've said it like a million times um I sat down yesterday and was unpacking all the alcohol inks a couple of which had exploded in ship bit but um thankfully we thought ahead too like individually package each little bottle of ink yes I know like each little bottle had its own teeny tiny plastic bag um when I went to go buy the bags at a specialty plastic shop in California um for those of you who some of you won't get the reference some of you will but they look like I was buying like 200 dime bags you know because I don't do that but that's what it looked like anyway as I was unpacking ink yesterday despite the fact that the spilling was mostly dry I still have can y'all see that thing this just doesn't want to come off I'm going to try when I get home a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol I don't know if that's going to help but anyway all right the one thing that I really wanted at walmart they didn't have of course so we're going to head to the office supply store maybe they'll have something that'll work um if not I'm going to maybe have my cousin pick me up wanted a walmart in California I hate to do that but I might send a picture of it to my daughter she lives a couple tans over maybe have her go to the walmart by her see if she can find one I don't know anyway we're still not running errands I'll be back one thing I want to mention when you are doing something like what we've done and moved um anywhere be it a big move or a little move I as you all know by now get lost everywhere um I use a navigation app you have heard me refer to him as jeevs it is not part of my car it's actually on my phone I use the navigation app ways w a z e not sponsored um it not only has constantly updated maps but it also has road and traffic conditions so I like that because jeevs will automatically reroute you around things or give you alternatives if you don't want to go on the freeway um there are um um options for voice um and um male or female different accents with or without street names I do it with the street names you've heard him talk um without jeevs I wouldn't be nearly as brave going out and exploring my new neighborhood that just wouldn't happen so I recommend for all of you um when you do do something like this download a navigation app I really do again I am a big fan of ways um google google maps is also good but I'm a bigger fan of ways than I am google maps so that being said maybe you have a favorite um navigation app that you use uh on your phone put it in the description so that everybody can check it out um my car generally also still does have a thomas guide for those of you who are my age you know what that is um you young people will have no idea look it up google it use the google all right we are headed to office depot I have not been to that store yet up here I've been to the staples and was very underwhelmed so let's go check out office depot okay so if I was underwhelmed by staples what's less than that because that would be office depot I don't know why I'm surprised because I wasn't crazy about the office depot by our old house and so anyway yeah um if you guys know of a really good office supply store um preferably if you even know a really great mom and pop that would be even better in fact I'm going to be looking for mom and pop um stores businesses to frequent in the Tigard Oregon area going forward so if you know of really good ones either small chains or like I said mom and pops let me know leave their names and information in the description below or I'm sorry in the comments below and uh yeah support your local mom and pops all right so now we're going to just head to Safeway because I didn't find what I needed and I think I'm gonna just wait until my husband and I go to Ikea we are going to get a desk for him to go in the art room because he likes to work on miniatures and things and he's gonna get a desk in the corner the room's plenty big enough um I just told him it has to be white I know that or gray um he can't just get like dark cherry because yeah I'm not okay with that it is still the art room so we're gonna go to Ikea for that I think and um when we do that I want to get a mat to go under my chair and his chair that'll be in there too so yeah anyway all right that's it I'll be back good morning everybody it's Thursday November 1st 9 45 a.m don't get excited I only know that because I looked it up already um when I first got up I had no idea what day of the week it was but anyway that's par for the course for me um I posted today's thoughts in my Facebook group that I wasn't that I had some stuff for donation after putting most of the art room back together and I wasn't sure if I was gonna do the donation today or maybe I was gonna wait and do it over the weekend with my husband I went and took a shower and thought about it I'm gonna just go do it today it's not that far from the house and it's right off of 99 so I'm gonna go do it this morning and you can see behind me we've got boxes of things back here mostly like storage containers and things I didn't want to purge before we moved because I wasn't sure what I was gonna need to be honest um what else I don't know we're gonna go do this and we'll see how difficult it is or is not um there is a store here in the neighborhood called value village um value village is part of the retail chain that also owns savers in california we had savers surf store and here in oregon we have value village I believe all of them support hope services I am not sure at this this exact moment but I believe they all support hope services I'll try to link their website in the description below they are a pretty large chain of thrift shops and generally speaking you can get kind of a good bargain there they're not necessarily the cleanest places it's a thrift shop so you know but anyway I like that it goes to a good charity and they seem to be less about you know making a profit um and more about helping people unlike some other chains so um anyway yeah let's go get that done and I'll be back okay so that was easy the donation um is around the back just like it was at the old goodwill by my old house sorry utility truck uh anyway and the value village is right next door to a woodworking um supply shop they have it says it's called woodcraft woodworking tools books and supplies I don't do woodworking but that's interesting the husband might want to come back we're going to head into savers I'll be right savers value village same chain different store was quick and easy um I went in and looked around I got a little bit of footage um if you're watching this you've seen that I was trying to be discreet so yeah but it's a pretty big store lots of clothing but they do have a lot of other items I did get one thing I got a pot it was 499 why did I buy a pot so I want to do more eco printing which if you've been following my um moving diaries and vlogs you know I did a little bit of experimenting while I with what I could reach um basically trying it with an iron and while it worked okay I don't think I had the iron on there long enough and didn't get hot enough I do want to try boiling which I'm not using my kitchen pots for which is why I bought the pot I do have a sauce pan that I also got it through store I think I also got a savers for two bucks and I use that for boiling plant material and making homemade inks and things but I wanted something that's bigger that I could boil papers in small papers I don't need anything super huge but so I got that pot that'll work and um yeah I don't advise if you're going to boil plant material and use it to make dyes or dye paper to for your art supplies that you use your kitchen pots you don't know um you don't know what that's going to do as far as um to your kitchen pot if it's going to stain it um if it's what materials are poisonous or not um and aren't fit for human consumption I don't advise that it's a foolish idea use um go get go to the thrift shop spend you know two dollars or three dollars go get a pot um I don't have anything else to do out of the house yay so I'm going to go home I'm going to maybe make one more cup of coffee and edit video because I have three weeks of like moving diaries and vlog to edit some of which is from the npr conference some is from the Myrtle Beach art retreat I also need to share my pictures and video with the other teachers which I haven't done yet I'm going to do it today um and there's one video tutorial I filmed while I was at the retreat I don't think the camera angle is super great um but I was able to film it and I will do a voiceover and that's on my camera camera so and I need to check the camera and make sure it made it through traveling fine without getting broken I don't generally bring my video camera with me I film with my phone which I'm doing now um because there's just too much of a chance of it getting broken with through going through tsa or something so anyway I just wanted to quickly go over and I did it in the old house I've always done it this way I use my brother p-touch to make my labels and you can make them anyway you don't have a label maker you could write them by hand on label paper um you could do them on the computer you could hand write them on masking tape use what you have I happen to have one of these from my old job so I use it and it's really great um not only do they stick really well but um they're not um when you peel I won't say they're not permanent they are but when you peel them off they don't leave a residue so I love this for what I use it for I use um what I stick the labels to I cut out of these dollar store chopping mats you get a package of two of them for a dollar from Dollar Tree I do know they have something similar on Amazon and I think you know a lot of different kinds of dollar stores across the country have something similar so um look look look around and see what you have um they're very thin plastic I will link the Amazon ones in the video description and and all the materials I'm talking about um they have them in clear but they also have colored ones which I use for my Etsy store inventory to make dividers they work for a lot of different things let me show you a closet and I use the colored ones as dividers between the Etsy store inventory it makes it really easy to find the different products when you all place an order um the colored ones are easier to see quickly than the clear ones um so again I'll link them in the description I cut them into pieces that are about four inches long by one inch tall I just use a plain old paper trimmer either this one or if I feel like digging it out um my other um it's not a rotary trimmer it's a other fisker's trimmer you know the one with the little orange slidey thing I you know it's been a long day in a long week couple of weeks I can't think of what it's called um anyway so then I cut them about like this then I take a regular hole punch and I punch one hole in each end this is again this is just a hole punch from the dollar I use a pair of wire cutters and these little mini cable ties which again are from amazon I'll link them in the description below and I use these to label my baskets I love that to use baskets to hold things on my shelves it makes it neater and cleaner and less chaotic appearing and things are clean and organized if I put a label on the end and I can tell quickly without digging in the basket wasn't it um I use Y weave baskets from target for the most part this small size before I discovered the small cable ties I used to use string to attach my labels but this is what it looks like when it's all done this is the small one and they also this medium size which no longer has what does that say cotton fabrics in it I just left a label but I put them somewhere else and then this really big tall one which fits if you have cube shelving this fits in the cube shelving really well um and they're all neatly on the end I'm gonna swing you around here and hopefully not too fast um it's towards the end of the day and I don't have all my new lighting and yet I need to get some more lamps taller ones because yeah anyway um so either why on the wire shelves um here I have bins and baskets I have a cute couple clear bins I'm going to keep using them they're a little bit taller and a little thicker to hold my artist paints I do have a lot of fine art paints so anyway um they fit really nicely on the shelf and they look really nice I have lots of these different kinds of white drawer storage things from Michaels and I label those too because if it's a way in the drawer if I don't have a label I don't know what's in there and you know I have a bunch of the little drawers medium drawers and then these big they're all labeled even the sewing stuff over here in the corner I didn't think I'd get to that today but actually I didn't got it all labeled there's the woods out out the window um and then my ephemera and small bits bank um these shelves will go up here on the top and then these things that are kind of sitting out in front will go up on those shelves and everything's labeled it's I just need my husband hang the shelves up for me and then we're all ready to go so that's how I label my supplies um if you want more specifics for categories I can maybe do that um but you really need to work with what you have in your art room and in the way of supplies and what you like working with um to come up with the categories that are going to work for you one of the new things I'm doing here in the new art room is I have muffin tins actually from the dollar store and I can take my muffin tin and I can go over to the small bits bank I can pull a bunch of bits that look interesting to work with and I can have them over here at the table rather than walking back and forth to the wall because I'm lazy that way and there's my little inspiration corner there's paintings all over the house you can see some out there in the hallway over there there's the computer one of my cards that set up for art journaling and my easel on a canvas I need to start on and my iPod dock yes I still have an iPod dock I know and then that cart is set up for painting so yeah and here in this blank corner my husband's going to get a desk he actually likes to work on miniatures so we're going to put a desk over there for him hopefully soon anyway that's it for the moment I'll be back hi guys it is Friday morning um November 2nd maybe 9 16 a.m I only know the time because I'm sitting here in the car looking at the clock we are headed out this morning I am going over to harbour freight to pick up some lighting for the art room and I am going to share with you all what I'm getting and why I'm getting it um an also um cabinetry that I've gotten for the art room some of which I had already I just got more I'm doing it really doing it on a budget and um I want to share with you all what um I'm getting because there you could of course go really expensively but I'm choosing not to do that we're still paying two mortgages so I need to save some money where we can um the why weave baskets I spoke about yesterday are um more expensive than something that you could find at the dollar store or Daiso if you have a Japanese dollar store near you but they are well worth it because they're a little thicker and they last longer and they don't crack as easy um so and then by also by contrast to the dollar store cutting boards I used to cut up to make the labels are well worth it because they're inexpensive yet thick enough to work well for what I use them for so spend your dollars wisely when you're doing this so we're going to after much research go get some clamp lights from harbour freight and some daylight bulbs because they will work very well for a couple of dark corners in the new art room that we have and then we're going to do a test shoot on the new art table which is underneath the ceiling fan in that room which is an led light so we'll be testing the lighting out there and the colors and I'll be asking you all what you think so let's head out and I'll be back so I got these industrial looking clamp lights from harbour freight tools they're 799 each I already had some 5000 kelvin daylight fluorescent bulbs so this is the area where my easel is before and I have no lights in here on let me get this up there at the top of the easel and plug it in and let's see after that's with the light on but no other lights on that's a big improvement already there's a little bit of a shine right there but I'm not normally going to be painting in the dark with no other lights on in the room so let's see what happens with the other lights on and also if I move it up a little bit yeah that solved that problem and I have the blinds closed right now but if I open them it would be a lot less of a dark hole than it was okay so you can see already there's some shadows right here all we have right now is the overhead light from the led light from the ceiling fan the colors look pretty good let's put on a spare clamp light and see what happens I'm trying putting the clamp light in different spots to see what I like better so far haven't figured it out yet from what I can see it looks okay my table not quite done putting things away yet I need to work on this I'm going to switch to the HD camera and see what that looks like okay that's with just the ceiling fan on the HD camera and not my telephone the other was my telephone which isn't bad you do get a little bit of a reflection here but that's um not any worse than the old studio to be honest in California which we had always like a reflection from one of my overhead lights let me turn on the clamp light and it's slightly brighter but I think it's okay either way what do you all think let me know I'm going to work on this a little bit and I'm going to speed through it I'm going to I'm just catching up my traveler's notebook from my travel my traveling that I've done lately and you all can watch and let me know what you think this is with the overhead led ceiling fan and the clamp light on which has a daylight bulb in it uh and yeah let's see let me know what you think we still have all these shelves behind me I'm not sure you can see that's it for this week I hope you've all had a great one coming up quick so remember to take a deep breath and not to get too crazy about it I'll try to take my own advice and go out and have a great day do something nice for yourself because you all deserve it and I'll see you later bye